Abr 16, 2002

I'll stay off the keypad for a month or so. Or much, much longer. There are songs to be sung elsewhere and voices to manufacture. There are things to be done, ciphers to break.

So, no dishes for now! Only aftertastes.

I have a new article out in peyups and stay tuned to tinig because I have stuff there too. On second thought, just stay tuned to both of them because they have such good stuff anyway and I just write there to spoil the mood, hardyharhar! (",)

Meanwhile, feast on my archives, my previous webworks in other publications, or - this is the best option - read the people linked here. I have been journal-keeping online since November, but the better occupation is to sit back and read other lives unfold, those other thoughts flourish!

Friends and strangers, good luck with your crafts and lives! And wish me luck with the things I must discern and fathom, the passions I must tame and mute.

Abr 12, 2002

On Sunday, I will go see about a girl. Come O happy day! First a waking-up, a shaking-off of dreams. Then a bath, a hurried grooming, and an over-conscious dressing-up. A brooding bus ride from Makati to Alabang. Bus Stop. And only then, will the sun really rise.

Tinigpeople! Good luck with the EB on the 14th! Happy anniversary again!

Shout out to Jio of Taym Matsing! Out of Geocities too, I see. It's his fifth version featuring the Pinoy graphics he renders so well. A beer-guzzling bejewelled dog replaces the cockfighter in this monkey's page. I haven't updated my links yet so this article will have to do for now.

Other queued links include pinoy webloggers and... well, linking pinoy webloggers is like linking them all, I guess. If you are not yet linked just tell me because - you're probably right - I'd look better with your link gracing my sidebar. Question is, would you look better associated with smelly bopis texts? Hardyharhar!

Out of the sidebar and into the blog, a cosmo-vogue question: who is the favorite morena? Tweety de Leon, Angel Aquino, Joey Mead, or somebody else?

(Question inspired by an office scene comparing favorite mestizas. But I've heard that game played much too often...)

Abr 10, 2002

Our veterans have lived only to see this day. And they haven't seen the benefits promised to them by the Philippine letter of law. They march on.

After 1986, we have pledged continued service to a foreign debt that a tyrant made for us. The widow Aquino had enough reason and precedent to reject payment of the foreign debts. We were down then, the aftermath of a "revolution." But the whole world was looking up at us, great capitalists saw our bloodless revolution as the great counter-argument to Marxist solution. But it was not logical at all since it proved less of a revolution than it purported itself to be.

The world's banks were already positive that we would reject the debts. The people of the Philippines did not make it, a deposed dictator did. Peru claimed the same thing after they got rid of their dictator (in a bloodier way). The banks relented. The world's governments approved that the banks released the nation of debts made on its behalf but not by it.

We had more media coverage, more applause, more of the world's faith. And the governments would certainly give us more of the slack it gave to the Peruvian balls. We were a nation held captive. We got ourselves out. And we have to pay some ransom? No! The banks could have given us freedom if we claimed that what belonged to us by sovereign right was not debt but a clean blank slate.

Time's Woman of the Year then made a stand that would sicken me for the rest of my days. She had much pomp and hubris that we would all suffer from. So pridefully, as if she owned our future as much as the deposed one thought he did, she said those debts were ours. And not a centavo of it would come out of Hacienda Luisita.

Enter veterans. Veteran's Day, Bataan Day, Araw ng Kagitingan. The day of people who staked their lives for sovereignty. People who loved the future more than themselves, a future that they did not care to own, only to honor. Enter veterans. Heroes day. The day of the bright enduring ones who would die for the country.

Not merely say they would.

Most of their rank did. Our forefathers, our grandfathers and great grandfathers and their families. Bloody deaths without the peace of slumber or good times or full unwearied smiles.

Some of them lived. What did they survive to become. Bemedalled soldiers made to prostrate themselves as beggars, stripped of the dignity that they deserved. We would have been a race of noisy, good-for-nothing cowards if not for their sacrifice! I would not look back to an honorable past of look forward to hope were it not for them. There would have been no Filipino or Philippines as we know it if they did not hold the lines as far as they did.

But they are beggars. The ingrates of the legislature would only reap the rewards of their sacrifice without thanking them for it. Damn common thieves of the basest, vilest kind. They ignored the budget for our veterans. They saw only for their own pork barrels. It was the fault of the lower house. The house that would see and make only heroes that would give them media mileage. And these fathers who gave them their arenas of power? The kongresistas conveniently cross them out of the budget. A billion-peso treachery. And that already is, even if it were only about the money. But the boiling blood knows that it is much more.

The Senator, Mr. Vilma Santos, speaks now. There's just no budget. Well, the Congress was constitutionally directed to make that room. They were sworn to it! Though the heavens may fall! Lawmakers as they are, their consciousness of the Letter should drive them to resign if they could not make it happen. And they would have had much more honor.

But the only room made was for the Six-Billion pork barrel. The righteous Senate's oily hands are not bloodless. Pockets filled with lard, minds filled with the lust of power, what is the excuse for their oversight? The Senate could have rejected the whole budget or direct modifications where they saw fit! No excuse. It was not oversight at all. It was willed.

Not one of our elected elite stood up for the veterans. Sure, they will all die anyway. And every year we delay, we deny. All the better! Money was saved. Or used to finance other things more precious than honoring the blood of heroes. And we will all forget the injustice done our fathers.

Every year, we deny. But let the future generation be so warned. The fate of ingrates has been ingrained in us since our cultural infancy:

Abr 3, 2002

National Artists Lucio San Pedro and Levi Celerio, In Pace Recquiescat. The voice of the Filipino sounded richer because of them, but their poetic genius were clearly borrowed from divine minstrelsy. The Land is poorer for the twin losses, but the legacy of greatness will outlive them here. Our ears will be ever full with their songs.

This song was the collaboration of masters San Pedro and Celerio. I feel as if it were a recalling of the oyayi (the Filipino lullabye). As the child recalls the love of his mother, persona weaves around himself a cradle of music, a song doing honor to the lullabyes, the genesis of all music that would ever issue forth.

We will not forget the womb of our own music despite the din of the world. We are the children of such art. The masters are dead. Long live the music.

Love alters not when its alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
-Shakespeare

Your heartaches are within his purview because you put them there. Maybe your narratives never considered the span of his sight. Or you deliberated but succeeded only in underestimating him.

Either way, he would that you didn't show your heart. You don't know him. As you see him, he is merely a blurred copy of his true likeness. As you hear him, he is only a muted version of his voice.

Yet you confided. His hands have wrought more ill than his face betrays. His tongue much more so. Measuring the length of his words and hearing its cadence, you thought there was no silence in him. You drank of his eyes too little to understand.

He is not to be trusted. He told you so himself. He has worn many faces before for both necessity and game. He has used myriad tongues. And he loved you in a way you never imagined a woman could be so broodingly worshipped. So he told you not to trust him with your secrets.

He loved you. So he tried to spare you his love.

But you poured them on, your secrets, your pain. You tried to fashion him to be the company of your misery. But he was bludgeoning himself to be the music you are bound to face. His forgery surpassed yours and, despite himself, he had to curse you with his dark love. Because of himself, he drew you to his dark love.

You should have kept your distance as he cautioned. You did not know him. For once, he was thoroughly honest when he said goodbye was best. You turned the deaf ear, believing only the best in him, your confidante-prospect.

And if he was flawed, you would change him. Such misery. Such ego.

Didn't you know? Friends and lovers broke themselves on him like waves on an ebon rock. They didn't know. Unsuspecting, they would reveal their syories to him. He would know however that the mere fact you were sharing your "joy" meant you weren't blissful. You were trying to convince yourself you were.

He saw through ruses men create for themselves until even they would believe their own deception. And if you said you were happy, he'd know you were lying.

But there was always something. Imperfection in the alloy of souls. Something. How about a difference of opinion between friends? Or a difference in religion between lovers. Or a difference of lovers of the lovers. Something. Either a difference or a sameness.

He was both wolf and bloodhound. He would know the smell of sickening sameness. How the routines you shared bred only boredom. How you walked the same pace and never really fought. He read ennui even beneath webs of denials. Same favorite color. Same sitcom. Same job. Same making-out procedures going-in-circles-and-circles ad infinitum.

You would unknowingly present him your cycles and he would show you with a word or gesture how vicious it was. How you had to take control. How it had to be broken somehow and how you-can't-wait-for-him-to-do-it-can-you?

Difference and sameness were akin to him. They were causes of destruction. Variation was violence, the-sameness was decay.

Without love or remorse he'd break hearts. Black rock as he was to sparkling gay foamy waves. And more terrible, he could crush without hate. It was just him. Seduce and destroy.

He wasn't touchy-feely as you thought him to be. Not the sensitive guy with his advice to ailing friends. He was the remover. He would dismiss all those years you guys loved each other by merely stating the obvious: you just wanted to believe you did. All that time! All those months lovers counted (even coining words like monthsary or buwanniversary). All of the family and friends they had to meet and endure. All the habits each had to put up with. All their noises. All shared moments and damn irritating silences! All those gifts, letters, text messages, marathon phone calls. All those receipts of dates saved, meticulously sorted and pasted on a special scrapbook. Scrap.

The remover was not a stone causing small ripples as they thought. They were the ripples. His unassuming veneer, that fake humility, that dishevelled look, those corny jokes? Those were not pebbles. He was the black rock. Waves broke themselves upon his hideous face.

And you, beloved one, what do you suppose is in store for you? You had your chance to run. So many times he gave them to you, little portals of escape. Little rabbit-holes out his wonderland. Fairydust to fly from neverland. He almost pushed you out at times. His love however could not be stronger than what-he-was.

And he could not click those ruby-red shoes for you.

Now your narratives are within his hearing. Your heartaches have color in his eyes. Your pain is in his mind. Your misery, he has thoroughly espoused. There is no escape now, no shelter, no shell.

The remover. He is the music you will face, sooner or later. The music of waves breaking on a rock.